Black Mississippi student forced to share valedictorian title with white student who had lower GPA

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10. My daughters' high school did not weigh classes

The GPA was the same regardless. Also even a four or five credit hour college class was treated the same as a high school class with no additional weighting. My daughter had two years of engineering math, 2 Calculus based Physics classes, four engineering courses from the flagship university, and Chemistry I.. My other daughter had Chem I, Ii, and Organic; a Junior level Biology class. All of these courses were treated as a single semester class just like the lowest level classes.

GPA can become important in Iowa because some scholarships have a GPA component to them (these are scholarships with specific criteria - if the criteria is met, then you get the scholarship). I suspect the method of weighing GPA also has some impact of competitive evaluation scholarships, but you would hope the reviewers would spend a little extra time with the transcripts from the different schools.

My daughter's high school also stopped ranking students. Which could become a problem since class rank enters into the admission decision at our public universities. Since our universities are relatively easy to gain entrance, it is not a big problem in our state.

It may be how I did the education of my daughters, but I find that too much emphasis goes on at the high school level. I understand for prestigious colleges and scholarships this can become necessary (taking the five AP classes a semester), but I don't think it is healthy. I was very careful in guiding my daughters' education. They actually had very few academic classes at the high school. I was looking at the bigger prize - how fast can they achieve their credential. My oldest daughter got her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering two years after high school graduation (this is from our flagship engineering university which is ranked 21st among public universities in the nation). My youngest is on track for getting her B.S. in Nursing 15 months after high school graduation (this is from a private hospital affiliated Nursing school whose last NCLEX exam score results were slightly better than the University of Iowa and they graduated almost as many nurses (80%).